Message Info:
- Text: Hebrews 11:32–12:3, KJV
- Series: Individual Messages (2012), No. 12
- Date: Sunday evening, January 1, 2012
- Venue: Eastside Baptist Church — Fayetteville, Arkansas
- Audio File: Open/Download
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⟦Transcript⟧ Just to give a brief overview, because I know there were a couple that weren’t here. We talked about running the race of a godly Christian life. And the Bible says here in Hebrews, it refers to the Christian life as a race.
It says here in Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1 through 3, Wherefore, saying, we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. And as I mentioned this morning, I keep wanting to say Paul.
I don’t know for sure that it was Paul that wrote Hebrews. A lot of people have a lot of different opinions, and I’m not even sure what mine is on the issue. But if I say Paul, does no, I mean the writer of Hebrews.
The writer of Hebrews says this, begins the passage with, where forcing that you’re compassed about was so great a cloud of witnesses. And as I said this morning, it refers back to chapter 11, where he goes through what we call the hall of faith. And I won’t go through all that again.
But he refers to the godly examples that we have of Christians who’ve gone on before that a lot of times we put up on pedestals, but if we read the accounts in the Old Testament of these people, we see accounts of their lives, warts and all. And we can learn from that that these people that we’re given as examples, that these people were just ordinary people who by faith lived godly lives. And that that should be an encouragement to us rather than a hindrance to us.
You know, we can look at people like Moses, people like David, and say, I cannot possibly live up to the standard they set. Unfortunately, the standard is not the standard they set. It’s the standard God set.
But we can be as good as David. We can be as good as Moses because they were fallen sinful people who just happened to live by faith. And we can do that as well.
And we can live godly lives in spite of the things we do wrong by living by faith and seeking to serve God. And so we’re given ordinary people, for example, who just happen to live godly lives by walking by faith. And we talked about the things in here that the writer of Hebrews, to his audience that would have understood Hebrew culture, Jewish culture, and Greek culture, He weaves these all in together, the Old Testament and the Greek Olympics.
We’re talking about a race. That’s why I keep saying running the race, because he calls it a race. And he talks about throwing aside the weight.
And as I mentioned this morning, the weight are the things, anything that holds us back, anything that weighs us down, that keeps us from pursuing God’s will and keeps us from pursuing godliness with the speed and the strength and the vigor with which we should. And sometimes these are not always bad pursuits. These can even be the good things.
Somebody, I think it was Brother Ted, pointed out to me this morning a phrase I’d heard before, but I wish I’d thought of it this morning, that says, the good is the enemy of the best. And he even said he was not the original one who came up with that, but he didn’t know who it was. So many times the good things we do, we get caught up in, and we forget about the best thing. We forget about the high calling that we have, the very highest calling, which is to serve God above all others.
And we can get caught up in good pursuits like family, like business, like community involvement. that we can get caught up in these things to the neglect of our service and relationship with God. And also, we have the point here where he says to lay aside not only every weight, but the sin which does so easily beset us.
And as we run the race, sin is our greatest obstacle. It’s like the hurdles that people run, and I believe now that that event is called the hurdles. I thought it was some kind of sprint thing, you know, with the hurdles, but no, that’s too long for the announcers.
It’s just called the hurdles. and they would go and you see these people at the Olympics and at other things and they run the race and they jump over the hurdles and man, their objective is to get over the hurdles as fast as they can or to get around the hurdles as fast as they can. It would be silly for them to stop and look at the hurdles.
It would be silly for them to slow down and spend a little time with the hurdles and it doesn’t help them in the race if they trip over the hurdles. So they’ve got to be watching. They’ve got to be timing things just right.
That’s how sin is for us in our running of the race for a godly Christian life. Sin will trip us up. It will stop us.
It will slow us down. And we’ve got to be watching out for sin as our greatest obstacle. And so he really gives us the example of the Christian life being a race.
And we’re going to continue on with that tonight as we finish this topic. His metaphor of it being a race continues on. When he goes past the sin which does so easily beset us, we didn’t even make it up through all of verse 1 this morning.
He says, Let us lay aside every weight and the sin which does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Folks, that’s so important, the statement he makes here, of let us run with patience the race that is set before us. Now, I believe I need to study this out more.
There’s always more to learn. But from my understanding of it now, of sanctification, is that at the time we come to Christ, from a positional standpoint of our standing before God, we are declared righteous because of the righteousness of Christ, not because of our own, but because of the righteousness of Christ, we’re considered in a righteous standing before God. And we’re considered set apart as His.
We’re bought with a price. We’re no longer our own. We’re set apart as His.
But from a practical standpoint of our behavior and what goes on in here, sanctification takes time. The ability to, I believe there are some changes, and I wish I could explain it further. It’s one of those mysteries, I think, of how the Holy Spirit works in people.
There are some changes in our hearts and in our lives that from the moment of conversion ought to be immediate. It’s called conversion for a reason. But at the same time, I think sometimes when we’re new Christians, we get frustrated with ourselves.
And older Christians, I don’t mean age wise, but I mean people who’ve been Christians for a while. We get frustrated with people who are newer Christians because they don’t as quickly adhere to exactly what we think they ought to do. And that’s where we teach them and we disciple them and we show them things from the Word and we pray with them and seek the wisdom of the Holy Spirit for them in their lives, but we get frustrated with ourselves and with other people that come behind us if the rough edges aren’t smoothed off quite fast enough.
And the fact is that not one of us became as godly as we ought to be the moment we were saved. Amen? Not one of us became as godly as we ought to be the moment we got saved.
I was saved January the 24th, 1991. That’s, what, 21 years ago? My goodness, that’s a long time.
Not for some of y’all, but for me, that’s a long time. 21 years, that’s, I can’t even calculate offhand the percentage of my life. That’s a little over 80%, I think, of my life.
And I’m not as godly as I need to be at this point. And you know what? On the day of my death, I will not be as godly as I need to be.
Not any one of us in here at this point are as godly as we need to be. And we can get frustrated with ourselves. I said new Christians, but even once we’ve been Christians for a while, Sometimes we can mess up and think, I know better, and we can beat ourselves up about it.
Instead of dealing with God and seeking forgiveness and confession and restoration in the fellowship that we have, we can beat ourselves up over it and become discouraged and say, you know, what’s the point here? Why don’t I just give up? And we can feel like giving up sometimes because we just don’t come along fast enough spiritually as we seem to think we ought to.
But we don’t realize that from a practical standpoint, the ability to live a godly life is a process. And we will never achieve complete perfection. There are some teachers who say we will.
I don’t see it in the Bible, so I can’t go by what they say. We will not achieve perfection on this side of heaven. 1 John, I believe it was 1 John, which was written to Christian believers, says that if you say you’re without sin, you’re a liar.
It wasn’t written to the lost world. It was written to Christian believers. And we forget sometimes that our sanctification in it from a practical standpoint, not from our position toward God, but from a practical standpoint of our behaviors and our attitudes, is a process.
And living a godly life is a process that we just don’t get immediately. We don’t have down immediately. And it’s very telling that he says, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
And that tells me that being a disciple, being a godly disciple requires a lifelong commitment. Would you agree with that statement? Being a disciple requires a lifelong commitment.
Living a godly life, running this race, requires a lifelong commitment. there’s a phrase I’ve heard, I’m trying to think of exactly how I’ve heard it, that I’ve heard used in many contexts where somebody will say that X, Y, and Z is a marathon, not a sprint. Have you heard that?
Am I the only one? Not specifically X, Y, and Z. That’s just kind of a fill-in-the-blinks thing.
But they’ll say such and such is a marathon, not a sprint. And since he’s using race terminology and race metaphor here to illustrate his point, I think that would be a fair statement because he says run with patience. If we’re just talking about sprinting, folks, I am so out of shape, it’s not funny.
I may not look at every time I say something like that, well-meaning people try to say, oh, you’re. . .
No. I’m too short for my wit, according to the body mass index that they give you. And I know it.
Not as out of shape as I could be, but I’m out of shape. But even with that said, I could sprint pretty fast, I think, if I had to. I’ve done it before, and I’m pretty.
. . That’s one of the things I said about that race, that 5K this morning.
I didn’t train because I thought, I’m pretty fast. I could probably do this all right. I took off trying to keep up with my dad in the 5K. For that first K, I kept up pretty well.
Kept up with the group of Marines that were all, I don’t know how they were doing it. They were running and doing it in step and in rhythm, and they’re bellowing out this, I don’t know, what do you call it? It’s not a chant, but cadence.
They were doing that while they were trying to run. And I’m barely getting enough breath just to run, and they’re doing that. But for them, that was a slow, steady pace.
Now, for me, I’m trying to sprint for a full kilometer. By the time we get to the end of it and start the second kilometer, oh, man, I was in trouble. See, I could have walked.
I could have even speed walked 5K easy. But see, I tried to make it into a sprint, and it wasn’t a sprint. It was not literally a marathon, but for me, it was a marathon.
Heaven help me if I’d tried to run an actual marathon. But see, those men could have gone a lot faster than I could. Even for their just slow, easy pace for them was faster than, or a little bit faster than my full-on running.
And you know what? As a result, like I told you, they came in way, way up the list of people that finished the 5K. And I was the last person who was not in a wheelchair or pushing a stroller.
I can laugh about it now. I couldn’t have been. I’d have been better off.
And I would have finished the race earlier if I had just walked and kept a slow, steady pace. but what I did is what so many of us do in our Christian life is that we start out guns blazing and on fire and you know what? Well, we should be.
But at the first sign of difficulty, we think, man, I should be able to do better than this. We see somebody who runs a little faster than us and we think, I should be able to keep up with them like I tried to keep up with the Marines. That was crazy.
That was crazy. The stuff they have to go through to become a Marine and I thought I could keep up with them. We see somebody else run faster than us.
We see somebody else getting it just a little better than us. doing just a little better at the race, and there’s something competitive about our nature that we think, I ought to be as good as them, and we try to keep up. And we wear ourselves out, and then comes an obstacle.
And we’re so focused on the other person that we’re not watching out for the obstacles. And we trip up, and we think, why? I can never do this.
I can never be as good as them. And we’re tempted to give up. Running the race for a godly life.
Trying to get up each day and live by faith and walk by faith and be godly and follow Him and seek Him and do all these things. When we get tripped up sometimes, it ought not to be cause for us to throw in the towel. It ought to be cause for us to get back up and by God’s grace, just as we were running before, to get up and run some more.
But we do live in a society. We do live in a society that is a microwave, popcorn, you know, fast food, drive-thru culture. Do we not?
And we want it now and we expect it right then. And we expect to be able to get things just like that where we don’t do it. Something about the idea of hard work and perseverance, and keeping on has fallen by the wayside.
God never promised us that we’d have the Christian life all figured out immediately. God never promised us that we’d be able to do all of these things perfectly, that we would just be perfect little angel children from the moment of conversion. This requires a lifelong commitment.
Being a Christian requires a lifelong commitment. Part of the problem with Christianity today is the number of people who call themselves Christians and who are just in it for a sprint and say, I’m going to live godly and I’m going to follow Christ until something better comes along, until something easier comes along, until the road gets a little too hard, until I’m tripped up by an obstacle, and then I’m out of here. We have no patience for the race.
When he says, run with patience, the race that is set before us. It’s not other people we have to live up to. It’s not other people we have to please.
They’re not the ones who laid out the track. God himself has laid out the track for us. The race set before us.
And we’re to run it with patience. And to be a disciple requires a lifelong commitment. We cannot run it and be half in and half out.
Some of the greatest pursuits in life are the things that require lifelong commitment. Why should Christianity be any different? I think about parenthood.
And I know I shouldn’t even be talking about it. I know so little of it compared to most of you. It just about broke my heart on the way to church today.
Benjamin was throwing a tantrum. I know that’s hard for many of you to believe. But he was throwing a tantrum and making a noise I had never heard before.
And Daddy had to break out a tone of voice that Benjamin had never heard before. And how my father’s voice traveled 240 miles and came out of my mouth, I’ll never know. It just about broke my heart having to do it.
And the thought that I’m going to have to do that again. And the thought that they’re going to be spankings. And I’m not whining, but it sounds hard.
The little lip that sticks at you. Sometimes, I can already tell I’m the disciplinarian at our house, and I’m not always, I’m not always, that’s not always fun. But we realized when we had a child that it was a lifelong commitment that our job was to raise him up to be a godly man and to get him ready for life.
And that’s not just a story about me. I hear so many of you that, you know, you’ve raised kids, and now they have kids of their own, and I hear the stories that you tell us on a weekly basis. I love hearing you all talk about your families.
Some of your eyes just light up when you talk about your families, but your kids have kids, and you’re still parenting your children. You’re still encouraging them and pointing them in the right direction and giving them guidance, and it’s a lifelong commitment, isn’t it? And yet I think most of you would say it’s one of the most worthwhile things you’ve ever done in your life.
Folks, Christianity, living a godly life, living for God, is the most worthwhile commitment we can make. Why should we expect that it should take any less effort than anything else we want? I see people on TV, see people out in the world all the time that call themselves Christians and have only a passing commitment to anything resembling the things of God.
That’s a sad state of affairs because you can’t be a part-time Christian. You can’t be a temporary Christian. Have any of you watched the show?
I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve seen it, but that show All American Muslims on the TLC channel? Okay. Probably best that we don’t watch it.
But they have people on there that they have some in the hijab and practicing their religion. And they have some on there that are nightclub owners and drink and all these things that Islam forbids. I’ve watched it a little bit.
I don’t watch it on a regular basis. And Christian and I have talked, and as much as we disagree with them, we at least have a little more respect for the people that are wearing the hijab and doing all these things than the ones who say, I’m a Muslim, but I’m going to go do what I want to do. You see, works-based religions can allow you to do whatever you want, and as long as you do certain things, you can still call yourself that religion.
Christianity is not like that, because Christianity is not, despite what people in our country have made it out to be, Christianity is not a works-based religion, and it’s not something you can be at 50% of the time. It’s not something you can be at for 50% of your life and then coast. being a disciple, living a godly life, running this race requires a lifelong commitment. And then he tells us, he says, let us run with patience the race that is set before us.
Let’s run this race all the while. Here are verse 2. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Tells him to look to Jesus, and we’re going to focus on that here in just a second. But he says in verse 3, For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself. Consider him and the things he endured at the hands of the sinners that he came to die for, lest ye be wearied and faint in your own minds.
See, we’ve talked about the example of godly people, ordinary people who live godly lives by faith. And that ought to encourage us to know that we can live godly lives too by faith because we’re just ordinary people. But even they are not the standard that we shoot for.
They’re an example and they’re an encouragement for us, But they are not the ultimate standard of what we’re supposed to shoot for, because even they fell short of the mark, just as we do. He said, as we’re running this race, we’re supposed to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. He says, considering Him, lest we be wearied.
I believe that’s the wording. Lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Folks, the only thing that will keep us in this race is that our objective is nothing more or less than Jesus Christ. Our objective in the race is nothing more or less than Jesus Christ. And let me first of all tell you what I don’t mean by that.
I don’t mean that he’s the trophy. I don’t mean that by running the race, being godly, doing godly things, being a good and nice person that you’ll somehow obtain Jesus Christ or his favor. That’s quite the opposite.
Our objective in this race is Jesus Christ and his glory and his pleasure. See, we couldn’t be in this race, as I said this morning, we couldn’t be in this race at all without him. Because sin is the ultimate obstacle.
And without Him, we are shackled in sin. And you put somebody from the U. S.
Olympic team next to somebody from federal prison who’s in shackles and you put them out on the track together, I guarantee you, a hundred times out of a hundred, the one without the shackles is going to win the race. Because you can’t run. You can’t run the race for a godly Christian life if you’re shackled in sin, if you’re in bondage to sin.
But once we’ve been freed from that, freed from sin and freed to Jesus Christ, then He is our objective. Not to gain Him or to earn His favor, but to show our love for Him, to please Him, to bring Him glory. And we’re to look to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross.
Again, here He invokes images that they would have understood, metaphors that they would have understood about the Greeks and the Olympics, because they were trained to keep their eyes on their objective, as we should be. I learned very early on, as many of us did, that if we’re busy looking around, seeing where everybody is behind us, and taking our eyes off the finish line, it slows us down. It would seem to me that we would be able to run just as fast while we’re looking around, but somehow or another, that’s not true.
Somehow or another, that’s not true. And growing up, some of the best athletes that I knew, I say best athletes, they were kids too, not pros, but some of the best athletes I knew among the kids that I ran around with were the kids that were most focused on what they were doing, most focused on the objective of where they were going. Folks, Jesus Christ is the objective.
He’s the one that we are supposed to be like. As we run this race of trying to live a godly life, We run for Him. We run to Him.
We run because of Him. He is the reason. He’s the objective.
And we have no hope of being able to run the race well if we take our eyes off of the objective, off of the finish line. He tells us as we run the race with patience, look to Him, looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Because all of this is about faith.
All of this is about. . .
Godliness is about faith. It’s about taking God at His Word and believing what He says. believing who He is and acting accordingly.
So I guarantee you, if we understood as we ought to who God is and understood as we ought to what His Word says we ought to do, and as I said, understand who He is in conjunction with it, I believe it would be a hard thing for us to disregard Him and His Word. When we understand the holiness and the mightiness of God, if we were to get a vision like Isaiah did in chapter 6 where he saw God and fell on His face and says, Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips and dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. If we saw the glory and majesty of God, and we were struck in awe by that, it would be very hard for us, if we believed that as we ought to, to go through our daily lives and know that God says, thou shalt not do that, or you should do this, or this is what I expect of you, or this is what I expect you not to do.
This is the attitude I expect you to have. This is the kind of love I expect you to have. It would be very hard for us to go through life with that kind of image of God and willingly disobey.
I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would be very hard for us to willingly disobey God if we really believed what He says about Himself. If we really believed what He says about how we’re to live. It says this faith that we have, Jesus is the author and finisher or perfecter of.
That this faith we have comes from Him and is completed in Him. It talks about for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Here is a finish line we are given what I believe is a glimpse of what we’ll see in heaven, where we see God the Son.
We see Jesus Christ, the one that we’ve talked about so much, who was the promised Messiah and came to be born and to live a perfect life and to die for us, that we might be freed from sin, that we might be freed from death and from hell, that we will see Him on the right hand of the throne of God. And as the picture’s painted in so many places in the Bible, that we’ll fall down and worship Him. Folks, heaven is the finish line.
We don’t finish this race in this life. Say, I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just over the line, just good enough, I can stop now. No, we keep running.
As long as there’s breath, as long as there’s life, we keep running. I’m not talking about physical running. As long as we have life, we keep running.
Because heaven is the finish line, and what we’re running toward is Jesus Christ. He’s the objective. And as we’re running, it sounds really hard to live a godly life. if we have the kind of faith that we ought to.
As I said, an understanding and belief of what God says about Himself and who He is and what He expects. And all the while we’re running, we’re looking forward to the finish line where before us stands the One who died for us, the One into whose hands the nails were driven, the One whose side was pierced by the spear, the One who wore the crown of thorns and endured the mocking for us. It talks about Him enduring the cross and despising the shame.
And all the while, the One we’re running toward is standing there, having died for us so that we could even have a place in heaven, who loved us enough to endure the cross and despise the shame for the joy that was set before Him. And if we look to Him, look to Jesus, keep our eyes focused on Him, who is the author and finisher of our faith, I picture us at the finish line. I picture us as we’re about to go into heaven, running to Him like little children, knowing how much He loved us and what He went through for us.
And if throughout our lives we keep that kind of perspective in mind, that we’re not just running the race, it’s not just a drudgery, but all this time we’re running toward Christ because every day, every step brings us closer to our meeting with Him face to face. And I believe that and the faith I described a minute ago are what will keep us in this race because He says, looking to Christ, the author and finisher of our faith, and consider Him, verse 3, lest ye be weary and faint in your minds. That looking to Jesus is the only thing that will keep us in the race and keep us from falling out of the race, keep us from giving up.
And so finally tonight, I want to remind you that we’re not just running the race to please other people. We’re not just running the race to make ourselves look good, to make our church look good, to make people say what incredible, wonderful, spiritual people we are. But we run this race focused on Jesus, focused on bringing Him glory, focused on pleasing Him, and focused on running in a worthy way until we’re reunited with the One who died for us.
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